1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus and method for refining subject activity classification for the recognition of daily activities of a subject, and a system for recognizing daily activities using the same, and more particularly, to refining apparatus and method for improving the correctness of subject activity classification using daily activities of a subject, activation time information of sensors mounted on objects associated with the daily activities of the subject, and the suitability of a continuous activity pattern in relation to the daily activities, and a system for recognizing daily activities using the same.
This work related to the present invention was supported by IT R&D Program of MIC/IITA [2006-S007-02, Ubiquitous Health Monitoring Module and System Development].
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in response to the development of ubiquitous computing environment and medical technologies, people become more interested in health care. For healthy lives, demands for a U-health care program and a health care service are sharply rising.
Owing to the sharply rising demands for the U-health care program and the health care service, a health care service is expanding from medical facilities to individuals or homes. In order to maintain a healthy life pattern and recognize an emergent situation, studies on the recognition of daily activities at home are actively being carried out.
As a study for recognizing daily activities, Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags are attached to objects, which are associated with daily activities, and an RFID reader is attached to a user (i.e., a subject). When the subject touches an object, a corresponding daily activity is deduced from a response of the object.
The merit of this method is that the use information of an object, associated with a daily activity, can be directly acquired. However, this method does not consider an activity of the subject (hereinafter also referred to as “subject activity”), but merely recognizes the response of the object, which was read by the RFID reader.
In order to correctly recognize a specific daily activity, it is required, basically, to acquire not only a response of an object but also an activity of a subject.
That is, both a movement necessary for the subject to perform a specific daily activity and the response applied to the object should be considered in order to correctly recognize a daily activity.
For example, when the subject sits at a chair of table to have a meal, the activity of the subject should be recognized as the term ‘sit,’ and at the same time, a response indicating that something is placed on the chair should be acquired.
Recently, in order to analyze subject activities, a study is being carried out using three axis acceleration sensors or the like, which are worn on the waist or shoulders of the subject. Subject activities are measured from the sensors, and are classified by applying a statistical process to measurement data, so that detailed activities of the subject can be recognized.
In this method, however, a highly sensitive device can cause a data error, which degrades the correctness of daily activity classification.
As discussed above, the problems of the conventional method of using the RFID tag and the RFID reader are that the subject activity is not correctly deduced since only the response of the object, to which the RFID tag is attached, is considered, and the subject should wear a large RFID reader in daily life.
Moreover, in the conventional method of recognizing daily activities using the multiple sensors in order to improve the correctness of daily activity classification, only advancement is that the same sensors are attached to different positions. Accordingly, correct subject activity classification is not enabled.